Today we face a climate of ever increasing misdirection by popular media. This site, along with others, aims to reveal the reality of America and the loss of fact inherent to the over riding theme of our current political and social confusion: Purposeful deception.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Halftime in America

Clint Eastwood popped up in a Super Bowl ad at
halftime Sunday night -- not dispatching bad guys as Dirty
Harry or snuffing outlaws in a spaghetti western.

Nope, Clint
was shilling for Chrysler Corp., talking about jobs, manufacturing and quality
-- traits some say are lost in this nation.

But the ad
also spotlighted some other things that are lost in today's America: Hope, resiliency, belief
in ourselves and an ability to bounce back from adversity.

Said Clint:

"This
country can't be knocked out with one punch, we get right back up again and
when we do the world is going to hear the roar of our engines. Yeah. It's
halftime America,
and our second half is about to begin."

That
message struck a chord here at Capitol Hill Blue.

Perhaps it
is fitting that in today's world, a message of hope comes from a multi-million
dollar television ad from a company that had to be bailed out by the government
and uses an entertainment icon as its spokesman.

In a
presidential campaign year, shouldn't a message of hope come from at least one
of the candidates for the highest office in the land? Shouldn't at least one of
the four contenders for the Republican Presidential nomination offer up a
believable message of hope or -- lacking that -- can't we at least get some
hope from the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

Apparently
not. Each of the candidates -- Republican and Democrat -- offer scripted platitudes
or come across as harbingers of doom. Hope, like truth, is a lost
commodity in politics.

All of the
candidates talk about jobs but has one of them come forward with a message that
offers any real hope of restoring jobs to the millions of unemployed -- and
disenfranchised -- Americans? Do any of them offer a real plan?

Mitt Romney talks
about how he put people back to work in Massachusetts
but doesn't really say how he will do it nationwide. Newt
Gingrich points the blame at black people, suggesting too many are too
lazy to work. Ron Paul is
too busy talking doom and gloom and promising to abolish the Federal Reserve
and the IRS to offer any real message of hope. Rick Santorum?
You can knock on the door to his head but there's nobody home.

Barack
Obama issues outrageous claims about jobs he never created or an
economy that he lacks the ability to restore. Talk comes easy to Obama.
Leadership -- and the action it generates -- are far more illusive.

So, given
these pitiful pretenders to the throne, can we really have hope in our future?

Yes, we
believe we can. These comic book candidates can't save America.

Only we can.

But we
can't do it by joining fake grassroots movements funded by billionaires. We
can't do it by dressing up as Uncle Sam and waving hate-filled signs at rallies
staged for TV cameras. We can't do it by sitting in front of a computer and
bombarding web sites with threats, canned rhetoric or tired, old political
bromides.

We can't do
it by hating ourselves or America.
We can't do it by hating others.

We're
better than that. We're stronger because we have a nation worth supporting, an
ideal worthy of belief and a system of government that -- despite its flaws --
is still second to none in the world.

We need to
get off our asses and start demanding accountability and change from those who
make the decisions that affect our lives. Those decision makers exist not only
in the halls of Congress or at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. They serve on city councils,
school boards, board of supervisors and in state legislatures.

When's the
last time you attended a city council meeting? When's the last time you
rose to speak about an issue that affects your neighbors? When's the last time
you worked to elect a local officials who represents your interests more than
the man or woman currently holding the office?

How many
envelopes have you stuffed this year? How many phone calls have you made on
behalf of someone you believe in? How many precincts have you walked?

True
grassroots efforts begin in your living room or at small gatherings at your
neighbor's home. They don't spring from scripted national efforts or come from
false prophets who misrepresent the Constitution or use populism to pad their
bank accounts.

America is not Barack Obama or Mitt Romney
or Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum or Ron Paul.

America is you, and me, and all the rest of
us out there who hold the power to actually make the changes that politicians
can only promise.

How do we
do it?

One step at
a time. We start at the local level and work our way upward.

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